By Mike McVey, Miniatures Director, Privateer Press
Miniature painted by Alison McVey and Mike McVey

By the time you read this article, the first issue of Privateer Press's magazine - No Quarter, will have hit the shelves. In that issue is the start of what will be a regular series of articles about painting and modeling miniatures - the Privateer Press Studio way. What we aim to do in those articles is look at whatever is new and fresh - and more than anything, challenging, and show how we tackled the various different aspects of it. So in the first issue we have concentrated on two of the new character pieces for WARMACHINE Apotheosis - The Harbinger, and Karchev the Terrible. Both of these are fairly advanced modeling pieces, so that is the real focus of the article - but in future issues we will be concentrating on different subjects - painting, converting and even building terrain. What ever is cool and informative really!

The trouble with a magazine is that there is only a limited amount of space - and there is too much cool stuff to fit it all in! In the same month that The Harbinger and Karchev are released, there are also two other amazing new Warcasters hitting the stores, how could we miss those out? That is where the BrushThralls come in... They have very kindly allowed us some space on their fantastic website to show some extra content that we couldn't fit in the magazine. So every time you are reading a modeling and painting article in No Quarter, you should be able to put down the magazine (hard I know, so much great stuff to read...) and log onto the Brushtralls website to find more painting and modeling advice from the PP studio.

This time around we are going to take a look at Terminus, the new, and totally mind blowing Warcaster for Cryx. First off, we'll look at the best way to get this beast assembled, and there are some features that you're not going to find on any other WARMACHINE miniature - have you seen the size of those wings?!? Then we'll look at how we achieved the cool alternate paint scheme - breaking it down into easy to follow steps.

"Wait a minute, what about us!" I can hear the Cygnar players moaning... "Nothing in the magazine, and now nothing on the BrushThralls site!" Well we haven't forgotten Darius, the New Cygnar Warcaster, but you will just have to wait a while longer before we get to him, we have plans though!

Cleaning

So - to business! It's all very well having a model that is going to be amazing when it's together and painted, but right now it's just a pile of pieces that barely fits in the box. Where do you start? Well that's easy - clean all the pieces! I can't overstress the importance of this stage - if you want a miniature that is going to looks good and stay together - make sure you do a good job of cleaning the pieces. It's not the most interesting job in the world, but can easily be accomplished while sitting in front of the TV. Just be sure that you get all the mold lines off and clean the joins so they fit together good and tight.

Assembly

When all the pieces are cleaned, you can start on the assembly. This isn't a really complex piece to assemble (less so than The Harbinger and Karchev for example), but there is a definite order that is going to make the process easier - and I have outlined that in the photographs below. Before you start waving around the glue bottle though, just make sure you have drilled all the holes for the joins that are going to be pinned. Then glue the pins into one side of each join and cut them to length. I'm not going to run through the pinning process here - if you don't know how to do it, just take a look at the other articles on this website. The same is true for general cleaning and assembly techniques - there is a wealth of information just a click away on this site.

The first stage is to fit the foot and armour plate piece to the right leg. This component locates on easily with two small pegs - make sure you get the right one, this should be the foot with the splayed-out toes. You don't need to pin these pieces - they are not weight bearing and the fit is good and positive.

It's worth saying a little about the position of the lower body section on the base at this point. Glue the tab into the slot on the base so that about half the toes on the right foot are hanging off the edge, and the lower section of fabric at the back is also clear of the base - once you hold the model to the base, you will see what I mean. The aim here is to have the figure sitting flat with not much of a gap under the fabric part. Once this piece is in position, and the glue is dry - you should attach the upper body. This definitely needs to be pinned into place, it's one of the crucial joins and the fit is not super-positive. Before you glue the body on - just hold it in place and check the fit of the left leg - you need to make sure that the heel of that leg is going to fit onto the surface of the base and the toes are all hanging over the edge. Once you are sure the position is right, put the leg aside for the moment and glue the body in place. You may find that there is a little filling to do between these pieces.

Once the foot and armour piece is attached to the left leg, you can glue it in place. One thing that I didn't do during the initial assembly, and had to go back and do later - was to add a pin into the heel of this leg and down into the base (secured with a blob of putty on the back of the base) - this really helps with stability and I really recommend that you do it. I didn't bother pinning the hip joint on this leg - this is quite strong already. It can be quite difficult to get the position of this leg just right - that's why it's important to get the fit of the body just right at the previous stage. Whenever you are assembling complex pieces like this, it's really a good idea to dry fit the pieces at the start - then you will know how to position them before committing to glue.

It's a good idea to leave the main body assembly to dry now - allowing the glue and putty to cure fully, and start on the wings. The pinion pieces can be glued into place first - no need to pin here, though you may want to file down the pegs a little to get a good, close fit.

The spines are a little more tricky to attach and definitely need to be pinned if you want them to survive the first game - or excursion in your figure carrying case. There are sprues that are labeled for each side, left and right, but you will have to work out where each individual spine fits. This is pretty straightforward - just look at the photograph of the finished miniature in this article. One good tip here is to only clip the spines off the sprue one wing at a time - and attach them before clipping the other side. That way you won't get them mixed up. And the left and right refers to the models left and right side - not yours...

Back to the body! The next step is to glue the head piece in place, no pins needed here, it should be pretty secure just with glue.

The left arm needs the sword attaching - and this certainly needs a strengthening pin. Make sure you understand how the piece fits before gluing it - one side of the hilt fits behind the arm.

Once the wings are assembled and you have filled any small gaps round the spines, you can attach them to the body. These joins are going to take a lot of strain as the wings are HUGE and the join areas is pretty small. The pegs that are cast on the body should be sufficient to keep them in place though - especially if you thoroughly fill round them at the next stage. Just apply a little glue to the join, press the pieces together and spray a little super-glue accelerator onto the join - then let this dry for a few minutes and run a little more glue into the join to strengthen it up, and let this dry naturally for at least ten minutes before touching it again. Accelerator does tent to make the glue brittle, so it's a good idea to re-enforce it with more glue.

When the glue is thoroughly dry - fill any gaps with modeling putty to re-enforce and stop any room for movement. Do as good a job on this as possible.

That's it! He's ready to paint...